Ted Grant

Afghanistan - Why the Russian bureaucracy invaded

In the international reaction to the events in
Afghanistan can be seen the fundamental national antagonisms and
class conflicts which affect the capitalist world. For the advanced
workers in the world labour and socialist movements, it is vital to
understand these things clearly, in order to answer the arguments
of the capitalist politicians.

Before dealing with the issues of diplomacy and power politics,
however, it is necessary briefly to outline the development of the
revolution in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a mountainous country, where only a fifth of the
land can be cultivated, and with only 20 million people in an area
as big as France. Its strategic position made it prone to foreign
invasion. In the second half of the 20th century it remained a
largely feudal state.

Nevertheless, this remote country wrapped in feudal chains and
superstition, has inevitably come under the pressure of the modern
world.

On the basis of the old feudal relations there was no
possibility of going forward. About 97% of the women and 90% of the
men are illiterate. About 5% of the landowners owned more than 50%
of fertile land. There are no railways, and it is only in the last
twenty years, with Russian assistance, that the country has
acquired a road system.

Historically, Afghanistan was a buffer between Tsarist Russia
and British imperialism. With the collapse of British power in the
Indian subcontinent, the influence of imperialism was replaced by
that of the Soviet bureaucracy.

First, the bureaucracy supported the monarchist regime, and
then, when it was overthrown by Daoud, they supported his regime.
With the chronic impasse of Afghanistan's social system the
pressure of capitalism and Stalinism on its borders has inevitably
had an enormous effect on the country.

In April 1978, conditions of mass misery and the corruption of
the Daoud regime resulted in a proletarian-Bonapartist coup.
Proletarian Bonapartism is a system in which landlordism and
capitalism have been abolished, but where power has not passed into
the hands of the people, but is held by a one-party,
military-police dictatorship.

The coup was precipitated by Daoud's attempt to suppress all
opposition. His overthrown regime had been a one-party
feudal-bureaucratic regime. The country's small working class had
no trade union organisations.

Had the revolution taken the healthy form of a movement of the
masses themselves, the result would have been very different from
what actually happened in Afghanistan. The April 1978 coup was
based on a movement of the elite of the army and the intellectuals
and the top layers of professional middle-class people in the
cities.

They organised the coup first of all as a preventative measure
against attempts which were being prepared to exterminate them and
their families. They acted from self-preservation, but also with
the idea of bringing Afghanistan into the modern world.

After the seizure of power, they abolished the mortgages and
other debts of the peasants, who were completely dominated by the
usurers, and carried through a land reform. At the same time, they
announced the nationalisation of "anything worth
nationalising".

Unlike the Ethiopian elite, however, they did not send thousands
of students from one end of the country to the other, into every
valley and mountain throughout Afghanistan, to explain the reforms.
Consequently, it was not clear to the mass of the peasantry what
the benefits of the April revolution would be.

A revolution in the classical sense begins with the masses at
the bottom, and involves the majority of the population. But in
this case, with the revolution beginning at the top, the town-based
intellectuals at its head were isolated from the overwhelming
majority of the population living in the countryside and the
mountains.

Among the other reforms instigated was the abolition of the
"bride price", the selling of women to prospective husbands for the
benefit of the family, usually of the male head of the family. The
programme for the abolition of illiteracy, moreover, involved women
as well as men. This was fiercely resented by the backward and
reactionary part of the population.

Using this, and the superstitions of the peasantry, mountain
tribesmen, incited by Muslim reactionaries, mullahs, monarchists,
landlords, and various riff-raff, began over a two-year period to
organise a guerilla war against the new regime in Kabul.

From time immemorial governments in Kabul had only a shaky hold
over the mountain tribesmen. And this applied to the new,
revolutionary government set up under Taraki. The rebellion was a
motley upsurge of hundreds or even thousands of disunited tribesmen
and groupings in different valleys and mountains. Many were bandits
and criminals "out for loot".

Entirely lacking unison, even under the best conditions the
rebels would have had difficulty in sustaining a national war
against the Kabul regime. However, this disunited rabble, with
hundreds of thousands taking refuge in Pakistan, was
surreptitiously backed with money from Saudi Arabia, and with arms
from Pakistan and to a certain extent from China.

The proletarian-Bonapartist regime in China always seems to back
the wrong horse, blinded by hatred of any extension of the
influence of Russia's proletarian Bonapartism. Undoubtedly, the
United States through the CIA also supplied money and arms to the
rebels.

According to a decision of Afghanistan's revolutionary council
taken in August 1978, they decided to "distribute among the
peasants the land owned by the feudal lords", which constituted
about 80% of the country's farmable area. On July 12 the council
decided to cancel peasants' loans and mortgages and reduce
officers' privileges in the armed forces.

Babrak Karmal, then deputy prime-minister - now president - told
the Libyan prime-minister on May 10, that, like the Libyan
Revolution of September 1969, the Afghan Revolution also stemmed
"from the two principles of Islam".

"Nor had there ever been a party called Communist
in Afghanistan …We make no secret of our commitment to
oppressed peoples. The development last week rid Afghanistan of the
aristocracy…There will be a programme of land reform, prices
will be brought down; wages will go up, and there will also be a
programme of nationalisation of anything that is worth
nationalising."

Under the reform measures, land ownership was
limited to six hectares or fifteen acres per family, or more in the
case of poor-quality land. The land in excess of the limits was
distributed among the poor peasants. The government encouraged the
private ownership of small and medium-sized undertakings both in
agriculture and industry. But poor peasants lacking adequate farm
implements were advised to form cooperatives.

As a direct consequence of the way in which the
proletarian-Bonapartist regime was instituted, it did not
immediately gain the support of the tribesmen and peasants.

The big and medium landowners took advantage of the backwardness
of the tribesmen to incite them against the "godless",
"communistic" regime in Kabul. This insurgency, in its turn,
produced instability within the top ranks of the regime. President
Taraki in effect exiled Babrak to Czechoslovakia as ambassador.

The "Communist" Party, calling itself the People's Democratic
Party, was a fusion of two communist parties, the Khalq and the
Parcham parties.

The Parcham Party had split under Babrak Karmal from the Khalq
in 1967, and later carried out Moscow's policy of support for
president Daoud when he seized power in 1973. This was opposed by
Taraki and Amin. This is how far the Russian bureaucracy was from
supporting a socialist transformation of Afghanistan at that
time!

Later, the two factions unified and, under pressure from Moscow,
Taraki began to oppose Amin's hard-line against the reactionary
mullahs.

After a meeting with Brezhnev in Moscow, Taraki returned to
Kabul with the intention of removing Amin.

Amin, however, outmanoeuvred Moscow by having Taraki
assassinated.

But Amin still depended on Moscow, who were becoming more and
more perturbed by his hard-line policies aimed at ending the
guerilla war in the mountains. His regime had firm control only in
the large towns.

The Russians manoeuvred Amin to call for Russian troops under
the terms of their joint friendship treaty. They brought the exiled
Karmal back with their tanks; Karmal became president, and Amin was
executed.

But the intervention shook the Afghan army whose morale had been
undermined by repeated purges.

The Russians wanted - and still want - a regime which
compromises with the mullahs in order to establish a firm
foundation for itself. The Russian bureaucracy intervened directly
because they could not tolerate the overthrow, for the first time
in the post-war period, of a regime based on the elimination of
landlordism and capitalism and the victory of a feudal-capitalist
counter-revolution, especially in a state bordering on the Soviet
Union.

The Kremlin bureaucrats fear that a reactionary ferment in
Afghanistan will spill over and affect the Muslim population in the
neighbouring regions of Russia. Muslims make up about a quarter of
the Soviet Union's population.

Thus the Russian bureaucracy, not only because of Afghanistan's
strategic position, but for reasons of their own power and
prestige, found themselves compelled to intervene. Such
intervention has nothing in common with the policies of Bolshevism
in the past.

The intervention of Russia in its turn has become a major
international question.

The press, radio and television of the world are filled with
indignant denunciations of Russian aggression. This propaganda
campaign against intervention in other people's affairs is
completely hypocritical.

When one considers the recent period, let alone the pre-war and
post-war crimes of imperialism, and especially the United States'
intervention in Vietnam and against other movements to overthrow
landlord-capitalist domination, it is clear just how hypocritical
all the indignation is, particularly that of the American ruling
class.

Not a word of caution, even was spoken against the intervention
of France in Zaire, in Chad and in other African countries. Nor was
Belgium reprimanded for her paratrooping incursion into Zaire.
Threats of breaking off commercial relations were not made against
them.

In the recent period, South African troops were used in Angola
at the direct instigation of American imperialism.

At present, South African troops remain in Rhodesia to be used
against Patriotic Front guerillas, if necessary. Yet there has been
no protest, no demand that the "Commonwealth" "peace-keeping"
forces insist on the withdrawal of South African personnel.

The blood-stained imperialist powers, with their blatant double
standards, are the last people to have the possibility of appealing
to the peoples of the world on a "moral" basis.

The measures which have been taken by American imperialism are
class measures. The breaking off of trade, the refusal to ship
grain and so on, means reprisals against the Russian people and
will have little effect on the bureaucratic rulers of Russia.

American imperialism has taken these spiteful measures not
because of the totalitarian bureaucracy, but in spite of the them.
They are attempting to hit at Russia because of the class character
of the Soviet Union, where landlordism and capitalism have been
eliminated.

In the light of this, we have the curious position of the
Communist Parties. On the one hand, they try to distance themselves
from the Russian bureaucracy because of the totalitarian nature of
the regime. On the other hand, they continue to declare that this
regime is "socialist". The Italian and Spanish Communist Parties
have condemned the Russian intervention in Afghanistan, while the
French Communist Party has taken an ambiguous position.

Instead of viewing the process from the point of view of the
class struggle internationally and the class relations within the
nations, the Communist Party and the Tribunites have adopted a
position of abstract "principles". "No aggression between peoples",
support for the United Nations, and so on.

They have condemned the Russian intervention without explaining
it in any way. Their attitude is that such an intervention is not
nice! They take a pious, sentimental, middle-class point of view: a
"socialist" country should not behave like this.

In reality, this is the other side of the policy of "socialism
in one country". In its early years, the Russian bureaucracy argued
against Trotsky when he said that the Red Army could be used for
the purposes of the international socialist revolution. Yet now we
have the grossly bureaucratic use of the Red Army without the
support of the workers and without supporting a movement towards
socialist revolution taking place clearly in the view o f the world
working class.

The Russian Stalinists are indifferent to the opinions of the
working class. The capitalists are too, but they try to hoodwink
the workers.

Marxists can be effective in gaining the conscious support of
the workers of the world only by telling the truth at all times.
That was the way the Russian state conducted itself under Lenin and
Trotsky. They based themselves on propaganda and actions which
would raise the level of consciousness of the working class
internationally. They stood for the real self-determination of
peoples.

Anything which acted to raise the class consciousness of the
working class was justified; anything which had the opposite effect
was to be condemned. That is the criterion which has to be used;
anything which increases the internationalism and the powers of the
working class must be supported by the advanced workers; anything
which results in a lowering of class consciousness and exacerbates
national divisions must be condemned.

The class struggle doesn't have to stop at the narrow level of
the frontiers. In France in 1968, we had the instinctive solidarity
of the international working class with the French workers. The
German, Italian, Dutch, Belgian and ether workers on the frontiers
of France refused to blackleg on their French brothers and sisters.
They were prepared to render assistance to the class struggle in
France. Transport workers, airport workers, railway workers - every
section of the working class was instinctively prepared to give
solidarity, and it is on this that the international movement of
the working class should be based.

On the other hand, Trotsky explained in the period of the rise
of Hitler, that the Red Army should be mobilised and should even be
used to give assistance if requested by the working class of
Germany, to prevent Hitler from taking power. But this presupposed
a correct policy in Germany itself.

If the Communist Party had offered a united front to the Social
Democrats, Hitler would have been prevented from coming to power.
It would probably not have been necessary to use the Red Army.
Nevertheless, the Red Army could have been mobilised to give
assistance to the German workers in the face of possible
intervention of the part of British and French capitalism. It could
then have been used to supplement, not to replace, the socialist
revolution in Germany itself.

Had these policies been followed, the world working class would
have been spared the nightmare and suffering of totalitarian
Hitlerism and the bloodbath of the second world war in which many
millions died.

The problems of the class struggle are not solved by nice,
"moral" behaviour on the part of the powers. It is a class question
and a social question.

What should determine the policy and attitude of socialists are
the class interests of the workers as opposed to those of the
capitalists. What determines the policy of the capitalist nations
is profits, power, privilege, prestige and the demarcation of
spheres of influence of in the neo-colonial domination of the
world, particularly the under-developed countries.

That is the naked ideology of capitalism. They try to disguise
this with all sorts of subterfuges and moralising, but in reality
that is what determines the policy of capitalist Britain, America,
France, Japan, Germany and the others.

On the other hand, the policies of the Russian, Chinese and
other proletarian Bonapartist regimes are determined not by the
interests of the world working class, not by their "socialism", but
by the income, power, prestige and privileges of the bureaucratic
caste which usurped power in the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, because of the different social basis of these
regimes, the capitalist powers support every rotting, obscurantist,
reactionary semi-feudal landlord-capitalist regime, as in Vietnam.
The Russian leaders, on the other hand, support the revolution in
backward countries when it takes place in the distorted form of
proletarian Bonapartism, and support such movements only when they
consider they will further their own interests.

Probably, Moscow was taken by surprise by the insurrection of
the army, a middle-class elite, and of the Communist Party in
Afghanistan. Once it had taken place, they set out to take
advantage of it and supported it. But it is not certain that they
knew a coup d'etat was going to take place in April 1978.

However, whereas they can lean on distorted revolutions in
backward countries, they cannot allow themselves this luxury as far
as the advanced countries are concerned. They are opposed to a
socialist transformation in advanced countries, as this would
threaten their rule in Russia. The establishment of a democratic
socialist regime in any major advanced country in the world would
immediately threaten the foundations of the bureaucratic misrule in
Russia, China and in other Stalinist states.

In the backward countries, however, where the abolition of
feudalism and capitalism has led to the installation of a
bureaucratic elite on the model of Stalinist Russia and China, and
to give support.

Nevertheless, the ending of feudalism and capitalism in a
country like Afghanistan opens the way to bringing this archaic
society into the 20th century, and is therefore a progressive
development. If we just considered the Russian intervention in
isolation, we should have to give this move critical support. But
because of the reactionary effect it has on the consciousness of
the world working class, which is a thousand times more important
than the developments in a small country like Afghanistan then
Marxists must oppose the Russian intervention.

The overriding danger under contemporary conditions is the
alienation of the workers of Japan, Western Europe, USA and other
advanced countries from the ideas of socialism and socialist
revolution.

This is shown by the attitude taken by the Tribunites. Like the
Communist Party, they unfortunately base themselves, not on the
real movement of the class struggle and on the actual relations
between the great powers, but, on the contrary, rely on abstract
"moral" condemnations.

For them, frontiers which have been established over the last
two centuries are sacrosanct. In the case of Afghanistan, they are
satisfied, then with frontiers which cut the nationalities in half,
dividing them between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other neighbouring
countries.

They appeal to the United Nations as a means of resolving these
problems, yet the complete impotence of the United Nations, like
the earlier League of Nations, has been amply demonstrated by its
failure to prevent a single war since 1945, and such conflicts have
claimed 25 million lives since 1950.

The impotence of the United Nations is also demonstrated by its
inability to halt the monstrous armaments race. At least
£250,000 million is now wasted on military spending every
year, money which, if it were used in a constructive way, could
easily transform the world.

But of course, these antagonisms are a reflection of the
dialectical contradictions between the capitalist states, and,
above all, of the major contradictions of our time, that between
the Stalinist states, on the one hand, and the countries of
capitalism on the other hand.

The Russian intervention in Afghanistan must be condemned,
despite its progressive aspects, because it is spitting at the
opinions of the world working class. Robespierre long ago declared
that "missionaries with bayonets" are never popular.

But the demand by the imperialist powers, supported by the
Communist Party and the Tribune group, for the withdrawal of
Russian troops from Afghanistan is utopian. Russia, of course, has
vetoed this demand in the UN Security Council.

The demand for American withdrawal from Vietnam succeeded only
because of the pressure of the American people and the US soldiers
disgusted by the dirty war. But the reactionary class nature of the
opposition in Afghanistan means that it will not succeed in pushing
out Russian forces.

If the revolution in Afghanistan had a classical character on
the lines of the October 1917 revolution in Russia, then far from
intervention, the Russian bureaucracy would now be having
difficulty in maintaining their power even in Russia itself.

The United Nations is merely a forum for the airing of arguments
between the powers and the settling of secondary disputes. No major
issue can be solved, especially as the veto has been built in, so
the superpowers can veto any resolution brought before the security
council, thus paralysing this body on any issue which touches their
vital interests.

Thus the solution to national antagonisms, the problems of arms,
the solution of the problem of war, can only be achieved by the
overthrow of capitalism and Stalinism, and through the institution
of a Democratic Socialist Federation of the United States of Europe
and of the World.

This is the only final solution to world problems and world
diplomacy.

The so-called "practical" politicians who try to steer away from
reality resolutions of moral condemnation are utopian. They
wishfully hope that the tiger of capitalism and the tiger of
bureaucracy will become vegetarians, and eat grass together.
Unfortunately, however, the lion does not lie down with the lamb -
but consumes it.

The antagonisms and contradictions that have been building up
during the course of the last 50 years can be overcome only through
the democratic control of the working class - not only on a
national - but on an international, scale.

However, because of the progressive steps for the elimination of
landlordism and Afghanistan's nascent capitalism, the imperialists
will not achieve what they are hoping for. Undoubtedly, America,
Pakistan and China, will supply arms and money to the rebels, but
there will not be an Afghan "Vietnam" for Russia, as the American
imperialists hope.

Balancing between the different nationalities of Afghanistan and
leaning on the poor and middle peasants, the Afghan regime, based
on Russian bayonets, will undoubtedly be able to crush the rebels
and establish a firm proletarian Bonapartist state as a Soviet
satellite.

In Vietnam, the American imperialists leaned on the corrupt
landlords, the military, and the capitalists, while they were
opposed by the majority of the population in Vietnam. In
Afghanistan, as the truth dawns on the people - as the poor
peasants and the minority peoples find that they will benefit from
the social changes - the new regime, despite the national question,
will be able to consolidate itself.

US imperialism, despite being the greatest military and
industrial power in the world, was defeated by barefoot, ragged
peasants in Vietnam because of the class question, because of the
national and social oppression, and because it was clear that
America was an alien oppressor. In Afghanistan however, once the
counter-revolution has been defeated most of the Russian troops
will be withdrawn.

The malicious wish of the imperialists for a long and disastrous
war is misplaced, for social reasons. The Bonapartist regime and
the Russians will find a way of compromising with the mullahs.

American imperialism backs everything that is reactionary in the
world. Now they are reinforcing their support for General Zia in
Pakistan. Such measures will inevitably boomerang on the
Americans.

The American trade reprisals may result in the Russians deciding
to back the Baluchis and the Pathans in Pakistan They could speed
up the disintegration of Pakistan, and perhaps fulfil an old dream
of Tsarist diplomacy: a warm water port.

Behind the scenes, Russian diplomacy will warn the Americans not
to prolong the withholding of grain, technology, and credits. They
will warn that they may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a
lamb, and therefore would have nothing more to lose by intervention
in Pakistan, especially as Zia, with the encouragement and
assistance of the US and China, is assisting the rebels in
Afghanistan.

Before things go that far, however, it is likely in the not too
distant future that there will be a compromise between the United
States and the bureaucracy.

The Chinese bureaucracy has condemned the Russian movement into
Afghanistan, although they proceeded on exactly the same lines in
Tibet when they conquered the country and crushed a
counter revolutionary revolt.

It is noteworthy that the takeover of Tibet by the Chinese Red
Army received nothing like the present condemnation or indignation
from the capitalists, because events in that remote area of Asia
hardly affected them.

China's intervention did, however, lead to a war between India
and China. But the imperialists adopted a fairly neutral stand, and
no measures were taken against China or India. Nor were there
reprisals against India when its army intervened in Bangladesh to
help the Bangladeshi people's struggle against the oppression of
Pakistan.

Active workers in the labour and trade union movement must take
a stand on the basis of a Marxist class analysis. This is the only
way to cut through the hypocrisy and hysterical propaganda from the
capitalist class and its venal media.

Marxist analysis gives us an understanding of national and
international problems. It is a weapon in the struggle to transform
society in the interests of the working class.

Only by analysing the class interests that lay behind the
international clashes and contradictions is it possible to
understand the modern world and prepare the working class for the
necessary transformation of society.